


You're The Fear, I Don't Care

by UniverseOnHerShoulders



Series: Take Me To The Stars [35]
Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/F, Homophobia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-14
Updated: 2020-03-14
Packaged: 2021-02-28 21:36:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,582
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23054074
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/UniverseOnHerShoulders/pseuds/UniverseOnHerShoulders
Summary: Homosexuality is found in over 450 species, including Time Lords. Homophobia is only found in one.
Relationships: Thirteenth Doctor/Clara Oswin Oswald
Series: Take Me To The Stars [35]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1139201
Comments: 4
Kudos: 81





	You're The Fear, I Don't Care

**Author's Note:**

> This is an expansion on [this drabble.](https://universe-on-her-shoulders.tumblr.com/post/189336531235/also-for-soufflaker-88-who-cares-if-they)
> 
> Warnings for homophobic language.

There’s nothing out of the ordinary occurring, really; not by Clara and the Doctor’s standards, at any rate. It’s just a standard day out – a chance to get away from it all, get out of the TARDIS, and pretend to be normal again in a country Clara had once called her own, on a planet that was once hers and which wasn’t tainted, irrevocably, as being the place where she’d died. It’s not London – too dangerous, too much likelihood of being seen by someone to whom she is technically dead – and so instead they’re wandering around York hand in hand, admiring the local scenery as the Doctor keeps up a continuous running commentary about the landscape and the buildings and the architecture, pointing out anachronisms and sharing anecdotes.

When the first shout comes, Clara doesn’t even notice.

“Oi!”

It can’t be aimed at them, she reasons. It must be targeted at someone else – someone who has seen a friend, or who wants to get another person’s attention. It can’t be intended for them, surely.

“Oi!” the cry comes again, and this time Clara looks away from the Doctor, towards the direction of the shouting. There’s a loose knot of four or five teenage boys advancing up the street towards them, dressed in dark joggers and hoodies, and all of them smirking from ear to ear in a way that manages to be both terrifying and irritating.

Clara knows. At once, she knows: knows who these people are, knows what they want, and knows what they are going to do.

“Come on,” she mutters, tugging at the Doctor’s hand urgently, aiming for a nearby shop. “We-”

“Oi, lezzers!” one of the boys shouts jeeringly, and his peers burst into cackling, mocking laughter as they grow closer and begin to make lewd gestures. “Oi, lesbos! Show us your tits!” 

“Come on,” Clara says again, but the Doctor doesn’t move. The Time Lady seems frozen to the spot, as though in a trance. “Doctor? Come on-”

“Fuckin’ dykes,” one of the youths says, as they reach the edge of the zone of physical proximity at which Clara starts to feel genuinely threatened. “What you doing ‘round here, lezzers? We don’t want no lezzers in York. Go back to scissoring in London.”

“Or put on a show,” one of his peers says with a smirk that makes Clara’s stomach turn. “Go on, give us a good show and we’ll let you stay. Come on.”

“Yeah,” a third adds, now only feet away from them. “Come on, clothes off… let’s see your tits, come on… lezzers always have cracking tits…”

One of them grabs at Clara, catching the bottom of her jacket, and the Doctor lets out a shout so loud that it frightens them both.

“ _Touch her again_ ,” the Time Lady snarls, her voice so thick with fury and menace that the boys, against their better judgement, stop and take a step back. Clara knows that voice; she’s heard it before, and knows what it means, but there’s terror rising in her chest and she knows she doesn’t have long before she descends into a full-blown panic attack. “ _And I will destroy you_.”

One of the youths seems to think about making a quip.

“Go on,” the Doctor snaps, her hands clenching into fists at her sides. “Get lost. If I ever see or hear about you using words like that again, then so help me god, I will rain hell on you until the end of time.”

Something about her tone and her expression seems to underline to the youths that whoever the Doctor may be, this is not an idle threat, and they turn and slink away with their heads bowed, hands shoved deep in their pockets as they exchange muttered words.

“Clara?” the Doctor says quietly, turning back to her partner and reaching out for her. Clara can hardly hear her, can hardly concentrate on what’s happening, as panic claws its way to the fore of her consciousness and threatens to consume her completely. “Clara?”

“I don’t…” Clara pulls away from the Doctor’s attempt at initiating physical contact, taking a step away from the Time Lady in an ingrained strategy of self-preservation that she’d learned long ago. “No. Don’t. Don’t do that.”

“Clara?” the Doctor frowns as Clara begins to stride away from her, her head down and her eyes stinging with unshed tears as she almost runs towards… well, anywhere that isn’t here, even as she starts to feel the panic taking control. Behind her, she’s aware of the Time Lady breaking into a jog to try to keep up with her, but she ignores the pounding footsteps, squeezing her hands into tight fists before folding her arms and tucking her hands into her armpits, as though attempting to hold herself together. “Clara? What’s wrong?” 

The jeers and catcalls of seconds earlier ring in Clara’s ears, but she can’t find the words to adequately express how small and disgusting the youths have made her feel. She’s had a lifetime of this; a lifetime of comments - both to her face and behind her back – and shouts and jeers and taunts. She’s had a lifetime of assumptions and judgements, and yet somehow it never gets any easier when she’s faced with other people and their shouted opinions or crude gestures. Somehow she has never managed to develop a thicker skin, and so each comment and look stings as badly as the first; each blow is like a personal attack that she doesn’t know how to ignore. She can’t find the words to express any of that, though; not to a being to whom sexuality and gender are tangentially unimportant, and so she simply opens her mouth uselessly and then surprises them both by bursting into tears.

Sinking to the pavement, she wraps her arms around her legs and begins to sob in earnest, her breathing accelerating as she allows the panic attack she had been holding at bay to overwhelm her. The world seems to grow silent around her; sounds are muffled as she fights to catch her breath and begins to shake, and she’s overcome by a sudden sense of absolute terror that she can’t seem to fight her way free from. Burying her face in her knees, she begins to rock back and forth, struggling for breath as she does so.

“Oh,” the Doctor says quietly, seemingly from a great distance, and Clara is dimly aware of the Time Lady taking a seat beside her and taking slow, steadying breaths which Clara tries her hardest to copy. The Doctor doesn’t try to speak; doesn’t try to touch her; just sits with her taking long, regular inhalations and exhalations as Clara does the same, allowing the fear and anxiety to pass with patience and compassion.

As some awareness of the world begins to return, Clara wipes her eyes on her palms and lifts her head up, the wind cold against her damp cheeks.

“Hey,” the Doctor murmurs reassuringly, wrapping an arm around Clara’s waist as she tokenistically struggles to pull away, worried that one of their tormentors might see them, but the boys are long gone by now. They’ve fled in fear, and Clara is relieved about that, at least. “I’m sorry about them, and I’m sorry I got so angry at them.”

“No, it’s… I just… I know I shouldn’t… but they make me…”

“I know it’s horrible,” the Doctor says in a low, quiet voice, Clara’s head coming to rest on her shoulder as she sags into the Time Lady’s side. “I know it’s awful. And I could say, ‘who cares if they saw?’ or ‘who cares what they say?’ but I won’t, because I know how much it hurts you to hear people be so small-minded. I love you. Alright? I love you, and if that’s shameful or wrong or if people can’t accept that, that’s a reflection of them, not us. We are not the wrong ones here.”

“I feel like it,” Clara admits, hating herself for the words and biting down on her lip hard before elaborating: “I feel like it, sometimes. When there’s people like that… and you see things online… and realise how much people hate us just for existing…”

“Those people are full of ignorance and hatred for anything they don’t understand. They can’t comprehend that two women or two men can love each other, and I think that’s really sad. I think it’s genuinely upsetting that they don’t understand love well enough to know it sees no gender. God knows, it didn’t in our case.”

“True,” Clara smiles fleetingly. “It’s just… you know, making us into… into sex objects, and we’re not… we’re not and I’m so sick of that being the attitude; that we’re just here for them, and-”

“They can go home and they can think that’s all lesbians are good for; they can watch their online videos and do who knows what, but they will never understand the richness of our relationship, or any relationship between two women. They can think that’s all women are good for, but they are going to have miserable, depressing, unfulfilling relationships, and we are not. We know we aren’t just what we do in bed, and if they can’t understand that, then they’re the ones with a problem.”

“I love you,” Clara mumbles, burrowing her face into the Doctor’s coat. “I’m sorry.”

“You have nothing to be sorry for. They should be the ones apologising.”


End file.
